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The DOI matches its Crossref record; 71 of the 71 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

A Survey of Actor-Critic Reinforcement Learning: Standard and Natural Policy Gradients

Grondman, Ivo, Busoniu, Lucian, Lopes, Gabriel A. D., Babuska, Robert·2012·IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C (Applications and Reviews)

Abstract

Policy-gradient-based actor-critic algorithms are amongst the most popular algorithms in the reinforcement learning framework. Their advantage of being able to search for optimal policies using low-variance gradient estimates has made them useful in several real-life applications, such as robotics, power control, and finance. Although general surveys on reinforcement learning techniques already exist, no survey is specifically dedicated to actor-critic algorithms in particular. This paper, therefore, describes the state of the art of actor-critic algorithms, with a focus on methods that can work in an online setting and use function approximation in order to deal with continuous state and action spaces. After starting with a discussion on the concepts of reinforcement learning and the origins of actor-critic algorithms, this paper describes the workings of the natural gradient, which has made its way into many actor-critic algorithms over the past few years. A review of several standard and natural actor-critic algorithms is given, and the paper concludes with an overview of application areas and a discussion on open issues.

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Metadata

Authors
Grondman, I., Busoniu, L., Lopes, G. A. D., & Babuska, R.
Venue
IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C (Applications and Reviews)
Published
2012-11
Volume
42
Issue
6
Pages
1291-1307
ISSN
  • 1094-6977 (ISSN-L)
  • 1558-2442
OpenAlex
W2046376809
Cited by
1,042
References
71
FWCI
14.57
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A Survey of Actor-Critic Reinforcement Learning: Standard and Natural Policy Gradients. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1109/tsmcc.2012.2218595
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Grondman, I., Busoniu, L., Lopes, G. A. D., & Babuska, R. (2012). A Survey of Actor-Critic Reinforcement Learning: Standard and Natural Policy Gradients. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C (Applications and Reviews). https://doi.org/10.1109/tsmcc.2012.2218595

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